Illustration by Carson McNamara
After his arrest in April 2015 for stealing $5.05 of candy, 24-year-old Jamycheal Mitchell — repeatedly diagnosed as psychotic and delusional — starved to death over four months, alone in a cell at Hampton Roads Regional Jail.
A federal lawsuit filed by Mitchell’s aunt states that, “by the time Mitchell died — officially, of a heart condition ‘accompanying wasting syndrome of unknown etiology’ — jail staff had allegedly denied him many meals, cut off the water to his cell and left him naked with no bedding or shoes as he smeared feces on the window of his urine-covered cell … citing numerous inmates who served time with Mitchell.” The lawsuit was settled for $3 million in 2019.
Two months after being placed in solitary confinement at the maximum-security Red Onion State Prison in Wise County after being sentenced to 59 years for home invasions in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, Tyquine Lee began to speak in numbers, sign his name with random letters and sometimes bark like a dog. A lawsuit filed in 2019 by his mother against the Virginia Department of Corrections alleges that her son lost more than 30 pounds after being confined in isolation for over 22 hours a day for 600 days, from 2016 to 2018. His food was sometimes covered in maggots, dirt and insects. When he protested his treatment, correctional officers maced him an estimated 25 times. VADOC eventually transferred Lee to New Jersey and paid $150,000 without admitting liability as part of a settlement.
Prison reform advocate Phil Wilayto of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality (Photo by Jay Paul)
These stories fire up Richmond activist and prison reform advocate Phil Wilayto. A former member of Students for a Democratic Society and a lifelong anti-war and anti-mass incarceration activist, Wilayto formed the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality in 2002 as “an all-volunteer organization of Virginians working for the survival of our communities through education and social justice projects.” He then partnered with a coalition of anti-mass incarceration organizations called the Virginia Prison Justice Network to create a single event coined the People’s Tribunal on Virginia’s Prisons, Jails and Detention Centers.
About 150 residents joined seven so-called “community judges,” all of whom work in criminal and social justice, at the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Oct. 7 of last year to hear oral, written and recorded testimony from incarcerated individuals and family members describing conditions in Virginia’s prisons. The tribunal created a report containing the recommendations of the seven judges and made them available to all 140 legislators in the General Assembly.
The judges were Princess Blanding, co-founder of Justice & Reformation and sister of Marcus-David Peters, who was killed in 2018 by Richmond police during a mental health crisis; Lillie Branch-Kennedy and Lorrene Crowell, both with Resource, Information, Help for the Disadvantaged and the Disenfranchised; Monica Chavez, co-founder of AMIGOS Legacy; Mignonne C. Guy, founder and co-chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Humanities and Sciences Committee on Racial Equity; the Rev. Rodney Hunter, pastor of Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church and board member of the Virginia Poverty Law Center; and Rob Poggenklass, executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, a justice reform political action committee.
After almost six hours of testimony, the judges stressed that voting and participating in Lobby Day at the General Assembly were the most effective ways of improving prison oversight. Pogenklass noted that “hearing from directly impacted family moves politicians in ways you would not believe it could, but it does; I have watched it happen.”
According to Wilayto, the central demand will be for the creation of an outside oversight body with the authority to enter any prison, jail or immigrant detention center at any time and speak privately with any incarcerated person. If members suspect danger or harm to the inmate, they will have the authority to demand the removal of any correctional officer, even the warden.
“We are still working out the specific powers the body would have,” he reports, “but they have to be more than simply investigating and reporting, and the body has to be independent of the Department of Corrections, regional jail authorities and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
I will not succumb to the defeat of incarceration.
—Letter of an anonymous incarcerated family member read during the People’s Tribunal on Virginia’s Prisons, Jails and Detention Centers, Oct. 7, 2023
While Gov. Glenn Youngkin has set aside $250,000 for an office of ombudsman to investigate and report prison deficiencies, Wilayto is unconvinced of its efficacy. “The ombudsman position, as it has been established, could provide a means for prisoners to raise grievances in a more effective way than presently exists,” he says, “or it could just be a toothless mechanism designed to convince the public that a serious problem has been addressed when, in fact, it hasn’t been.”
When implemented, the office may be advised by a committee consisting of lawmakers, VADOC staff, medical and mental health workers, former inmates, and a family member of an incarcerated person.
While an inquiry to the governor’s office regarding the duties of the ombudsman position went unanswered, VADOC responded with a statement from Director Judge Chadwick Dotson. “The Virginia Department of Corrections welcomes the opportunity to work with the newly formed Office of the Department of Corrections Ombudsman,” it reads. “The VADOC is committed to being a first-class agency and to its mission of helping people to be better by safely providing effective incarceration, supervision and evidence-based re-entry services to inmates and supervisees.”
Illustration by Carson McNamara
Prison Health Care Is Exactly What You Fear It Is
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, incarceration rates in every U.S. state are disproportionate to the rest of the world. The commonwealth of Virginia incarcerates 749 people per 100,000 — ranking it No. 17 in the United States, but at a rate higher than every other NATO country and even higher than autocratic countries such as Iran, Turkey and Russia. Louisiana is No. 1, incarcerating 1,094 per 100,000.
As of July, the average institutional daily population (ADP) of Virginia inmates incarcerated in VADOC’s 27 major institutions, eight field units, five work centers, one private prison and two hospital units was 24,563. Additionally, Virginia has 71 jails in 133 counties with a 2020 ADP population of 28,970. Virginia also houses an ADP of 183 inmates at two immigration detention centers.
These numbers, exacerbated by parole rules, limited compassionate release policies, an influx of illicit drugs, and an aging inmate population that’s disproportionately prone to sickness and behavioral health issues (an estimated 40% suffer from chronic illness) makes health care a growing concern. Between 2018 and 2022, expenditures for health care increased from about $7,200 to $10,800 annually per inmate.
Also, because of these health issues, Virginia experiences a high number of inmate deaths. VADOC reports that between Jan. 1, 2020, and Sept. 2, 2023 — a period that includes the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — 389 inmates in VADOC custody died, with the highest number coming from Greensville Correctional Center, with 71 deaths. In comparison, Deerfield Correctional, with a large population of geriatric and seriously ill inmates, reports 64 deaths during that same period. Issues proliferate at the local level, too: After four deaths at the Richmond City Justice Center, the Board of Local and Regional Jails issued a “compliance plan” in July after finding it violated requirements for 24-hour medical care and hourly security inspections.
In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court in Estelle vs. Gamble established “evolving standards of decency” for inmates entitled to health care under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. But for inmates to prevail on claims of inadequate health care, they could not just prove medical neglect but “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.”
[Virginia Department of Corrections] wants not just to get rid of him, but to get him to die.
—Carole Seligman, prison rights advocate, referring to inmate Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
Richmond native Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, who has been moved several times from one correction facility to another, contends he has been experiencing this indifference. Convicted on a murder charge in 1990 at age 18, Johnson says that his outspoken political stances as founder and minister of defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party led to abuses at the hands of corrections officials, including 18 years in solitary confinement.
In an email statement provided by his friend Carole Seligman, a California-based prison rights advocate, Johnson claims that in October 2021 an examination showed he had extremely elevated prostate-specific antigens. He says that the Nottoway Correctional Center delayed follow-ups for six months. He eventually received an MRI and a biopsy at VCU Health in May 2022, and on July 1 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
In February 2023, Johnson explains that his doctor ordered his meds, but he contends they were never distributed to him. Then in late March, his treatment plan abruptly changed from a series of oral medications and injections to 40 grueling sessions of external radiation. He says officials pressured him to sign a consent form acknowledging that the treatment may not cure his cancer and that there could be serious side effects. “I had to sign the form as a condition to receiving any treatment at all,” he wrote.
On Oct. 30, just after completing his radiation sessions, VADOC transferred Johnson from Sussex I State Prison to Red Onion’s so-called “B-3 torture unit,” a name coined by the inmates of B-building, who contend that the cells are filthy. The Wise County prison is in a part of far western Virginia where there are no major medical facilities. He says his referrals for cardiology and urology appointments were canceled and Sussex I did not send his medical records.
“The move [to Red Onion] was to block my seeking treatment for ongoing serious health problems,” Johnson alleges in a letter. “Not just side effects from the daily radiation treatment I recently underwent for several months, but symptoms consistent with congestive heart failure, for which VADOC and [Sussex I] medical officials refuse to allow any diagnostic testing or treatment.”
Seligman, who has corresponded with Johnson for over 15 years, says that during his incarceration he has been shuttled from Virginia to Oregon, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and back to Virginia. “This man stands up for himself and for other prisoners,” she says. “[VADOC] wants not just to get rid of him, but to get him to die.”
When asked about the charges, VADOC said in an emailed statement: “The VADOC Health Services Unit can confirm that the patient is receiving care addressing his overall health and specific health needs in a timely manner.”
Medical and behavioral health care got so deficient at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women that inmates in 2012 filed Scott v. Clarke, a class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, claiming that the substandard care was cruel and unusual. The suit was settled in 2016 with 22 terms of compliance. According to a 2017 Washington Post story, however, delays in implementing those terms resulted in the deaths of two inmates — 70-year-old Carolyn Liberto and 38-year-old Deanna Niece — in July 2017. An April 2022 inspection found Fluvanna compliant in all but two of the court-imposed standards, although VADOC disputed those findings.
Compounding prison health care problems are the chronic staffing shortages. At the tribunal, a family member read a letter by inmate Nathaniel Lamb, who was being held in the Sussex II prison for kidnapping and sexual assault. “In here you see neglect at its most severe state. You have to kick the door for a man who is having a heart attack, for he is in a cell where the intercom doesn’t work. … The next fight is finding a nurse due to shortness of staff. You see stabbings of the week stitching themselves up, because there is nowhere to go. … It’s prisoners who notify staff of overdoses or seizures. It’s prisoners who are the first responders and render first aid with no medical training.”
A Serious Drug Problem
On Nov. 2, VADOC locked down Greensville Correctional in Jarratt for almost 20 days following the deaths of six inmates in five months, three from drug overdoses. During the lockdown, searches turned up heroin, cocaine, steroid tablets, 1.5 ounces of meth, almost 150 Suboxone strips, 15 grams of waxy THC oil, two doses of LSD and 10 grams of fentanyl — equivalent to 5,000 lethal doses. The searches also yielded 21 homemade weapons and 10 cellphones, among other contraband.
On June 15, 2019, eight Haynesville Correctional Center inmates overdosed in the recreation yard on a drug dubbed “spice,” a synthetic compound that mimics THC. Seven of the men recovered. The eighth died, allegedly only 30 days from release.
VADOC reports that between 2016 and 2022 there were 417 drug overdose incidents, with 33 resulting in deaths.
The sources of the drugs are disputed, although there are three basic routes: in the mail, through visits and through corrections personnel. Even after strip-searching children, banning menstruating women from wearing tampons and stopping all visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic, drugs still flowed freely inside the walls. VADOC reports that from Jan. 1 to Sept. 15, 2023, it intercepted 119 pieces of mail containing “suspected substances” without identifying exactly what those substances were.
Because of the pervasive drug crisis, VADOC started offering assistance to inmates fighting addictions that many of them acquired after entering prison. However, according to inmates, videos loaded onto their electronic tablets encouraging them to seek help and promising programs and counseling are nothing but a cruel form of bait and switch.
One female inmate from Goochland County says in a personal email that “because this institution (along with many others) is heavily saturated with substances, there are a significant number of women who are addicted and actively seeking help. They are telling the staff that they have a problem, and they need help. Essentially following the advice of the video.
“These women, brave and wanting change, are being met with indifference, humiliation and punitive responses,” the email continues. “Some are being tested over and over again, racking up [monetary] charges and upping their security levels (losing good time) simply because they asked for help. Some are getting their rooms ran[sacked] and being antagonized. … They are angered, hurt, scared and now moved to action because they are being promised something by the department that just doesn’t exist.”
In March, VADOC reported numerous initiatives to reduce the flow of drugs, including body scanners to detect contraband on visitors, photocopying mail, pocketless jumpsuits for inmates and utilizing narcotic detection canine teams. Responding to an inquiry on how addicted inmates can seek treatment, a VADOC spokesman referenced a press release announcing the $1.2 million received in October from the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority to fund three projects addressing drug use: hiring six specialized social workers to conduct therapy, evaluating the effectiveness of specific agonists and creating a video that highlights the available treatment options.
Pulling Back the Curtain
A legacy of secrecy shrouds procedures and policies behind the walls of Virginia’s prisons. In March, an inmate at the Fluvanna center took her own life and her body went undiscovered for four hours.
“No one from Fluvanna has reached out to me with anything, not even an update on an alleged investigation,” writes the woman’s daughter in a personal email. “So I’m basically trying to do all this on my own.”
The tribunal seeks to lift the opaque layers of confidentiality surrounding the inner workings of the prison system and expose them to the legislature and especially to the public.
According to Wilayto, the only way to guarantee that the government, as well as the prison system, do the right thing is through constant public pressure. “It was the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 that forced some changes in the prison and criminal (in)justice systems,” he says in a written statement. “Our hope is that the People’s Tribunal on Virginia’s Prisons, Jails and Detention Centers will be able to provide that kind of mass pressure.
“Lives depend on it, as does our own integrity.”
